Guns, Guns Guns

Tenshinai wrote:USA have been an empire since the late 19th century when it started aquiring colonies by force of arms and overthrowing governments and then taking over.

gcomeau wrote:

PeterZ wrote:So, you agree. Government run enterprises suck. You just want more chances to get it right instead of recognizing the incentives just don't work for them.

No.

That closing "See: Most of the rest of the developed world" was my way of pointing you at the many real world examples of governments running various industries just fine.


What may have confused you was my somewhat roundabout way of pointing out that what is not good at running industries is governments with lots of modern day Republicans in them. Because it's not really in their best political interests to have the government do the job too well when their entire election spiel since the days of Reagan rests on them telling their constituents how the government has some inherent inability to do anything right and the private sector is the answer to everything.

It's why when Republicans are in charge we get things like horse show directors as the head of FEMA. Or we get concerted and overt efforts to deliberately sabotage the fiscal health of the postal service. Etc...


In the meantime, most other developed nations approach these things rationally instead of with nearly religious anti-government dogmatism. They recognize that some things the private sector is better at, and some things the private sector *absolutely sucks at* (like, for example, health insurance. There's a reason the US has one of the most privatized and not coincidentally at all one of the most expensive and wasteful and inefficient health insurance systems on earth. And no, it's not all those immigrants, or malpractice lawsuits.)

Spacekiwi wrote:don't fret, we got them around here as well. Called the National party. Sold off 49% of some State owned enterprises that were turning a decent profit for short term book balancing, and now we have 49% less income off these enterprises to pay back the debts we still have. Short term gain, long term loss. We have sold a lot f state owned enterprises over the years, and eventually had to buy them back, they had been let so badly die, just for that last few dollars of profit...

Daryl wrote:Some functions are best done by private enterprise and some by government. All modern developed countries have goverment provided services that are efficient.
I've come to realise that my personal issue with the whole citizen topic is that some here from the US are essentially claiming that they are free people who control their government, and I'm just a slave whose government has authority over me. The short answer is bullshit. Our situations are identical, with the same balance of power.

PeterZ wrote:This isn't about having a say in how the country is run. It is about the source of authority within a country's government. European countries do not recognize that the legal source of authority for their government's actions come from its citizens. That legal source of authority comes from the governments themselves, not their citizenry.

Those governments allow their citizens to vote on who governs or rules, really. Once voted in as agents of government, the elected members of those in government use their corporate sovereignty as part of the government to act. That's not the way power legally flows in the US. US citizens use our sovereignty to assign agents to government to make decisions on our behalf. Those agents are limited in what they can do by the Constitution. What the federal government can't do falls back to the state governments and the individual citizens to address.

Its not about who has influence over who enters into government, but who holds the ultimate authority that makes a nation's government's actions legitimate, government of the nation or the citizens of a nation. Because a government that holds a nation's sovereignty can change how it is structured. Should it deny its citizens a vote, it has the legal authority to do that. That means the citizens' right to choose who rules them can be legally rescinded by government. The US government does not have that legal right or authority, because it does not have sovereignty nor has it been granted the legal authority to do that by its sovereign citizenry.

So long as the people are not sovereign, they are not at the top of their decision making hierarchy. They have influence, certainly but they do not hold the legal source of power for government.

Eyal wrote:

PeterZ wrote:This isn't about having a say in how the country is run. It is about the source of authority within a country's government. European countries do not recognize that the legal source of authority for their government's actions come from its citizens. That legal source of authority comes from the governments themselves, not their citizenry.

Those governments allow their citizens to vote on who governs or rules, really. Once voted in as agents of government, the elected members of those in government use their corporate sovereignty as part of the government to act. That's not the way power legally flows in the US. US citizens use our sovereignty to assign agents to government to make decisions on our behalf. Those agents are limited in what they can do by the Constitution. What the federal government can't do falls back to the state governments and the individual citizens to address.

Its not about who has influence over who enters into government, but who holds the ultimate authority that makes a nation's government's actions legitimate, government of the nation or the citizens of a nation. Because a government that holds a nation's sovereignty can change how it is structured. Should it deny its citizens a vote, it has the legal authority to do that. That means the citizens' right to choose who rules them can be legally rescinded by government. The US government does not have that legal right or authority, because it does not have sovereignty nor has it been granted the legal authority to do that by its sovereign citizenry.

So long as the people are not sovereign, they are not at the top of their decision making hierarchy. They have influence, certainly but they do not hold the legal source of power for government.

You realize that most developed countries have constitutions? And even in the few who don't, there's an implicit social understanding of just how far the government can go? A government in Europe (or even here in Israel, where we don't have a constitution as such) rescinding elections may well face revolution (or, probably more likely, be ignored while everyone involved is escorted from the building by kind men in white coats)

Daryl wrote:Some functions are best done by private enterprise and some by government. All modern developed countries have goverment provided services that are efficient.
I've come to realise that my personal issue with the whole citizen topic is that some here from the US are essentially claiming that they are free people who control their government, and I'm just a slave whose government has authority over me. The short answer is bullshit. Our situations are identical, with the same balance of power.